10 Reasons Why the World Maker Faire Was Awesome

The World Maker Faire rocked New York last weekend, its third year in the Empire State.
Fittingly housed at the New York Hall of Science (one of the world's first science museums, built for the 1964 World's Fair), the event featured hundreds of maker exhibits and thousands of captivated visitors.

We stopped by to find the coolest projects and activities shown over the weekend — take a peek through the gallery to see what made this event stand out, from GPS-driven bulldozers to flying foam planes.

Photo: Kids play with "Tangible Lights," interactive light-up building blocks that change color when connected.

Public Spectacle

Despite a day of rain, Maker Faire had almost as many outdoor activities as indoor hobbyists.

In addition to roaming robots and hovering quadcopters, there were rubber-monster battles, barely working mechanical bulls, hula hoop girls, and a unicorn with a flaming horn. And most

Above: Kids take turns riding on Jeremy Rosen's Austin Bike Zoo, a bicycle-based theatrical performance in the form of giant butterflies. Below: The Worlds Biggest Mouse Trap performance at the Maker Faire.

Crazy Collaboration

No single image can capture the full glorious chaos of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)'s Nerdy Derby, but this comes close. Built as a major upgrade to the classic Pinewood derbies, every aspect of the race was enhanced for the 21st century.

A pile of tools and materials were made available to budding car designers, who made their vehicles with whatever was on hand. Once the cars were completed, they were registered, photographed and given an RFID chip to identify them.

Cars were then placed on a track (shaped using CNC machines) with an Arduino-driven start gate and a IR finish line. All results were automatically saved into a database of competitors, while the winners were displayed on a big screen.

"We wanted a project that used all the skills of the ITP," said student Tak Cheung, one of the army of organizers who were managing the event. "We did everything from constructions and electronics, to database management and graphic design."

According to Cheung, all the plans and designs will be made available online for anyone else who wants to bring their derby to the next level.

3-D Printing Everywhere

The MakerBot team was out in full force at this year's Maker Faire, but they weren't alone. There were dozens of different 3-D printers being demonstrated, and many more projects that used 3-D printed parts without bothering to make a big deal out of it. For many makers, 3-D printers have become as pedestrian a tool as hammers.

Wired Plants

Biomodd is an art installation that combines computer, plants and architecture into a strange ecosystem.

Led by biologist turned artist Angelo Vermeulen, they are making a system where plants and algae cool computers while the heat from computers helps plants to grow.

The tower that you see here is a partially completed installation that will open as part of an exhibition at the NYSCI (hosts to the Maker Faire) on Oct. 25. The complete exhibition will include a larger garden and make use of solar panels to power the PCs.

Sleek Toys

We've profiled Sifteo Cubes before, and were happy to see them at the event.

Sifteo Cubes are a swarm of tiny computers with tiny screens. The cubes can sense when they're tilted, touched, and most interestingly, when they're next to each other.

Wired spoke with game designer Josh DeBonis whose puzzle/maze game Sandwich Kingdom is launching alongside the game system. Sandwich Kingdom is an overhead game that looks sort of like Zelda, but with each cube only showing a tiny section of the world. By arranging and moving the cubes around, you can begin to piece together a picture of your environment.

"I love board games and physical games," DeBonis told us, "The system allows us the affordances of digital gaming but it's more hands on."

Sifteo Cubes are a strange little toy but they're also a glimpse into a future where computers aren't single devices, but a network of bits and pieces that can be dynamically combined and taken apart depending on what you want to do.

Above: Stephen Levinson, left, and Sabina Varanelli play the game Crome Splash on Sifteocubes, an interactive gaming system preloaded with puzzle and word games at the Maker Faire. Below: Leonardo (last name withheld) observes the Crome Splash game.

Weird Art

Artist Eric Hagan demonstrates Cycle, an interactive installation that simulates a nice ride along a country road. A stationary bicycle drives a wheel, which is in turn attached to a much larger wheel adorned with a tiny model of a road. In turn, a webcam transmits what it sees to a screen in front of the rider.

It's like Rube Goldberg meets Le Petit Prince via virtual reality — just one of the many exhibits at the show that were delightful and charming.

Megascale Models

Visitors gather around an exhibition of Stan Munro's Toothpick art. Munro brought a selection of the buildings he's recreated using only toothpicks and Elmer's glue.

Why? We'll let his FAQ answer that.

"Why not? There’s a lot of ridiculous things out there in the world. But there’s nowhere in the world you can see, side-by-side replications of famous buildings, even less-so, famous religious buildings from different faiths in one place… let alone out of toothpicks. I’m honored to be the first."

Photo: The 'Toothpick World' of Stan Munro is a 5-year project recreating famous buildings from around the world, made from 3 Million toothpicks and fifty gallons of glue.

Cool Kits

Breck Baldwin of the Brooklyn Aerodrome presents his remote control aircraft to a group of eager onlookers. The plane is built from a pretty simple kit, with the main construction ingredient being sheets of foam insulation.

The planes are highly maneuverable, and surprisingly durable. We watched loop-de-loops, sudden banks and dives, and a few crash landings, but with some minor repairs, they kept on flying.

After every demonstration, Baldwin took the time to insist on how simple and easy it was to build these things. Over and over he hammered home the message: "You can do this too."

Mind Expanding Lessons

Sketchup evangelist and Director of Techno-Marketing for Trimble, Omar-Pierre Soubra wants you to know that bulldozers can be 3-D printers too. Those white domes on the top of the poles on each side of the bulldozer's blade are GPS receivers precise to within 1/3 of an inch.

Roadway engineers design roads in a 3-D mapping programs and then that information is transmitted to the bulldozer, which minutely adjust the orientation of the blade to match the plans.

"Technically, it's a hybrid CNC lathe and printer," says Soubra, because the machine both adds to and carves away from the landscape, "but when we're talking to kids we keep it simple and say it's a 3-D printer controlled by beams from spaaaaace."

How far is this far-future technology from real world implementation? Soubra points out that it's called 'machine control' in the industry and it's been around for over a decade. "Now that you know what to look for, you'll see those domes everywhere."

Kids Kids Kids

Children were everywhere at the Faire, leading to both excitement and consternation on the part of exhibitors. While very cool to see all the young enthusiasm, a lot of the work that the makers deal with involves dangerous machinery and fragile creations. More than one exhibitor apologized to Wired for not being able to show a full demonstration because some important device had not stood up to rough handling by small hands.

Photo: Clara Lehmann of Middle Village New York uses a loom to practice Saori, the Zen art of weaving from Japan.